What we do with your data

This Is SXM (thisissxm.com) is an independent guide to St. Maarten and St. Martin, built and edited by Leslie Samuel. For the purposes of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the UK GDPR, This Is SXM is the data controller for the personal data described here. You can reach us at leslie@thisissxm.com for anything on this page.

If you sign up for updates, we collect your email address and the date you signed up. We use it for one thing: to tell you when a new part of the island guide is ready. A couple of emails a month, no more. We do not sell or rent your address, and we do not use it to build a profile of you.

Legal basis: your consent, which you give by entering your address and submitting the form. You can withdraw it at any time by clicking unsubscribe in any email or by writing to us. Withdrawing consent is as easy as giving it, and it does not affect anything we did lawfully before you withdrew.

To run the list we use Kit (formerly ConvertKit), an email marketing service that stores your address and sends the emails on our behalf as a data processor under a contract that limits them to that job. When you submit the form, your address is sent to Kit and Kit emails you a confirmation link you have to click before you are added, so we only ever hold addresses that opted in on purpose. Kit is based in the United States. We keep your address until you unsubscribe or ask us to remove it, after which we delete it from the active list within a reasonable period. You can read how Kit handles data in its own privacy policy.

We want to know which pages people find useful and where the site is failing them, so we can build the right things next. To do that we use Google Analytics, loaded through Google Tag Manager. It tells us things like which pages get read, roughly where in the world visitors are, and what kind of device they use. We look at this in aggregate. We are not trying to identify you personally.

This uses cookies and similar technologies, and it may involve Google processing some data (including a truncated version of your IP address) as our processor. Legal basis: your consent where the law requires it for these cookies, and otherwise our legitimate interest in understanding and improving the site in a way that is proportionate and privacy-conscious.

You can opt out at the browser level by blocking cookies or using a tracker-blocking extension, and the site stays fully readable if you do. Google publishes its own explanation of how it handles this data in its privacy policy.

The site is hosted on Vercel. Like almost every web host, its servers keep standard technical logs (things like IP addresses and requested pages) to deliver the site, keep it secure, and stop abuse. That is our legitimate interest in running a working, secure site, and Vercel handles it as our processor.

Some of the services above are based in the United States, so your data may be processed outside the European Economic Area and the UK. When that happens, we rely on the safeguards those providers offer for international transfers, such as the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses. We do not share your personal data with anyone for their own marketing.

If you are in the EU or the UK, the law gives you rights over your personal data. You can ask us to:

• show you what we hold about you
• correct anything that is wrong
• delete it
• restrict or object to how we use it
• send you a copy in a portable format
• withdraw consent you have given, at any time

To exercise any of these, write to leslie@thisissxm.com. We will not charge you or make it difficult. If you think we have handled your data badly, you can also complain to your local data protection authority. In the UK that is the Information Commissioner's Office; in the EU it is the supervisory authority in your country. We would rather you told us first so we can put it right.

This site is for a general travel and history audience and is not aimed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has sent us their data, write to us and we will delete it.

As the site grows, this policy will change with it, and the tools it names may change too. When that happens we update the date at the top. For a meaningful change to how we use your data, we will do more than change a date quietly. Questions are always welcome at leslie@thisissxm.com.